Luther’s legacy Gordon Campbell looks at how influential Martin Luther was in bringing the Bible to ordinary people, and highlights an upcoming conference commemorating 500 years since he published a New Testament in contemporary language.
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ive hundred years ago this September, at the 1522 Leipzig Book Fair, a new volume went on sale with an inaugural printrun of 3,000 copies. This was a New Testament in German, printed not by any recognised press from a great city but by a newly-established printer from smalltown Wittenberg. It was an immediate bestseller: copies were snapped up and it quickly sold out; public clamour for more led to a thoroughly revised reprint coming out in December 1522. Although no translator’s name even appeared on its cover or inside, every purchaser of this September Testament (as it was dubbed), or its December reprint, knew they were getting their hands on the work of Martin Luther. Luther’s name would adorn later editions soon enough, as early-modern Europe’s book markets were flooded with New Testaments and Bibles from printers and publishers far and wide and a genuine Luther Bible needed distinguishing from pirated versions.
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Herald July/August 2022
Luther’s 1522 September Testament launched the project of democratising access to Scripture for German-speaking people. From being read in a scholar’s study, a monk’s cell or a nobleman’s chamber, and usually in Latin, it would now enter the homes of educated citizens who could afford a copy, to be read aloud in German to the household. Before Luther, there had been 14 Bibles in High and four in Low German, none of them fully satisfactory. Now, here was a New Testament in contemporary German, reflecting both the language and discourse of public service in Saxony, and German as spoken in the street. In early
Luther had spelt out how fundamental, for human lives, was the Word of God, with the gospel of Jesus Christ at its heart.
1522 Luther binge-translated a first draft in just 11 weeks, while sequestered in a castle and protected from a rising tide of opposition to his reforming activity in both Empire and church. Luther worked from the latest and best Greek New Testament edition available, by Erasmus, with the Latin Vulgate used throughout the Western church also in his memory and on his desk. Back in Wittenberg, with his team of collaborators, months of revising and reworking the text for publication would follow. From this beginning came an enterprise that would keep Luther and his associates busy for the next 25 years, until his death in 1546: a steady supply of ever-improving New Testaments and Bibles, in High or Low German, came from Wittenberg, with all profits reinvested in a sustained publishing drive that the September Testament had launched. Why all this effort? For Luther, the state of the church and the salvation
